GRASSHopper Digest Editors sought

[Mark P. Line]

On Tue, 23 Nov 1993, Ronald Thomas wrote:

> Any advice I offer to this list is offered for free, and I **DO NOT**
> give permission for it to be published for profit!!

I was afraid somebody would say that. That's why I tried to be explicit in
my message yesterday. I'll make another attempt, but perhaps somebody else
who has gotten my drift might also like to give it a try -- I don't seem
to be expressing myself clearly.

Any mail messages sent to the GRASSHopper lists are copyrighted material,
as far as I'm concerned (regardless of what international law and
netiquette say about it), and cannot be reproduced in any form without the
consent of the copyright owner. This means that, without your consent, I
cannot copy your message and send it to somebody else without your
consent. This very message, in fact, is illegal because I included your
original text. I seem to be in good company.

Distributing such material for *money* (I didn't say for *profit* --
that's different), of course, without consent of the copyright owner,
would be a breach of this accepted (but presumably highly illegal) practice.

Therefore, in my post yesterday, I explained that I wanted digest editors
to summarize the useful material in their rubrics and to write digest
articles containing, in effect, the answers to people's questions without
including the actual text copy. Just as in any journal review article
which does not make original contributions in the subject matter itself,
these digest articles would give credit to those original authors such as
yourself; the digest article itself, however, would be written by a
different person (in many cases), who also receives credit for doing this
work and receives royalties for his/her article. If this is unacceptable
practice, then we really are in good company.

In closing, I would like to pose two questions. The first is to Ronald
Thomas, to whom I am here replying: why have you not come forward with
your objection before now? Discussion has been open since October 10th,
and you're the first of presumably *all* GRASSHopper authors to have made
such an objection. My second question is addressed to the general
GRASSHopper authorship, therefore: Does anyone else share this objection?
Would it cause you to stop posting answers to the lists if a paper digest
were published periodically? If there is an author out there who is the
sole worldwide expert on some topic and who *would* stop posting, we might
have to reconsider our plans. But that will depend on a broader consensus,
one including the users who have no Internet access and who would like to
have GRASSHopper material in digested form on paper. 

-- Mark

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Mark P. Line                       Phone: +1-206-733-6040
Open Pathways                        Fax: +1-206-733-6040
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Bellingham, WA 98227-0296
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